


No in-betweens

by hauntedpoem



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Draco Malfoy's wand, Gen, Gen or Pre-Slash, HP: EWE, One Shot, Wandlore, loneliness drives people crazy, post- breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-05
Updated: 2017-02-05
Packaged: 2018-09-22 06:50:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,759
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9589541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Harry finds Draco's wand in a drawer at Grimmauld place. It gives him something to do after his failed relationship with Ginny.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Just an excuse for me to write gen+ wandlore+a grumpy Draco

It was mid-October.

Grimmauld House at number 12 looked its usual doom and gloom. No need to argue with Walburga's portrait again, he's had enough of her screaming for the rest of the night. Harry conjured a thick curtain over it. Considering the usual old house noises, he deemed that a silencing charm would be welcome.

  
Rain was pounding in the windows with the ferocity of badly tempered doxies presented with fresh meat. The house cracked and shuddered. Harry shuddered with it. Kreacher scared the hell out of him, popping unannounced with lukewarm linden tea and ham sandwiches tasting of ash. The toaster, magical as it was, started burning the bread ever since Harry mentioned electricity. Everything tasted like crap these days so Harry swallowed his protests. No matter what he did, the house still felt cold and unfriendly. The house hated him and Harry was lonely and silent between its grey, oppressive walls. He couldn't find it in him to hate it back. Instead, he started talking to himself whenever he descended the stairs, thinking that as sentient as the house had been for the past month, it might enjoy a little... erm... conversation. Or rather extended monologues about basic maintenance and his sordid life post-Ginny. 

 The Weasleys... They sometimes Firecalled. Only Hermione visited him regularly, always bringing a basket of fresh fruit and veggies. She would hug him and then tell him it would be all right. On the rare occasion she noticed him talking to the house, she would keep silent. Whatever helped Harry.

 It's all right, it will be all right, she said. 

Harry didn't want to deny her that certainty but at times he had to ask himself whether she wasn't trying to minimise an impending consignation to the Janus Thickey Ward for at least a week. Eventually, he will be all right. But not today.

  
Ron looked at him awkwardly for a while and then reverted to simply being Ron while Ginny left with her Quidditch team and... That was it. End of story. No other news from her.

Their relationship lasted almost a year since the war and Harry thought they were doing fine... Taking their N.E.W.T.S. together, travelling and staying at the Burrow the next year, meeting with the D.A.D.A. members for a reunion. They were doing just fine, right? Only that they weren't.

Now he was completely alone in a house that didn't like him, shouting at the walls, casting revealing charms every two steps. He was also stuck with an ancient house-elf that refused to look him in the eye and kept grunting that master was unhappy with the service. It was more like "Ungrateful half-blood." Harry let it slide.  
It was befitting of him, in a way, Harry mused. The saviour needed to be saved. The wounded healer finally cracked.

It was gradually driving him to exasperation. The creaking staircase and the leaking faucets, the slowly crawling mould and the hellish portraits... This is your damned life, Harry James Potter.

And now that wand, rattling maddeningly in a drawer. Malfoy's wand. In the middle of the night, in the middle of the day. It was there, sending silver and green sparks and rolling inside the drawer with the obnoxiousness of doxies having an orgy. He'd witnessed that before and that's one of the reasons he kept away from the basement.

  
Harry knows it started somewhere between the 21 and the 22 of October. Two days since he came back... here. He barely managed to sort his belongings from the trunk when the noise almost made him jump. He thought it was a boggart.   
But it wasn't a boggart, just a wand he took by force from Malfoy's trembling pale hands on that fateful day. His own wand started sending intermittent streams of golden light as if recognising another fellow in the house.

They started thrumming and vibrating and sending sparks toward each other. Harry looked at the unusual display dejectedly. Hawthorn, ten inches, a single unicorn hair, reasonably pliant... meet Holly, eleven inches, phoenix feather core, nice and supple. Were they flirting with each other? Ollivander would have a fit. 

Harry laughed and unconcerned with the onslaught of noise, uncovered Walburga's portrait. She was sleeping. And snoring. Thinking twice, he had to admit that it was better than talking to the walls.

Undoubtedly, Grimmauld place was awful no matter the season.  
Cold and dark, still unwelcoming. Harry paid visits. Today it was the Family Tree room. A former member of the most ancient house of Black, Sirius- a burnt spot on the wallpaper. And for Merlin's sake, the bloody wand kept rattling and vibrating, waking Harry every night, no matter how many silencing charms he would cast around. By the 28th, when Harry ran out of chocolate frogs by allowing some to escape, the wand just rolled as if exhausted and feeling pitiful for a moment, Harry took it out and examined it closely.

As if it recognised the magic in him, the wand started emitting again those silver and green sparks - Slytherin colours, Harry thought - only they were faded, dying lights, now. The wand was using its last accumulated magic to send him a message.

"Yeah, I get it. You're spent." He sighed. "Me too." Here he was, talking to Malfoy's wand. How insane is that?

He should have given Malfoy his wand right after the trials but Malfoy never asked and Harry was too wrapped up in wanting to move on with his life. He had something too important to look forward to: his life with Ginny which now became the bland, pathetic existence without her.  
"I don't feel happy anymore, Harry"- she said. And she was right.

She wasn't obliged to take him back, the wounded war hero, the tortured saviour. She had the right to live free of that, Harry knew it very well and if not being his girlfriend anymore added to her happiness, he would not stand in her way. As soon as the summer ended, Harry moved out and into the Black family's house, breathing two year's worth of dust. Molly insisted he visit them weekly but Harry could barely leave his bed most of the days.  


It was already mid-November when he decided to do something about it. He hadn't left Grimmauld for weeks and going right into Malfoy territory seemed all of a sudden, very stupid. Even Hermione thought it might not be the right time. 

"Why didn't you hand it back to him after the war, Harry?"

"It is after the war, Hermione." He looked at her begging for understanding.

Most of the times, she let it be, the argument hanging in the air. "I'm seeing Ron at the Broomsticks. Would you like to come? He misses you, you know?"

Harry always postponed. Not now. Not today. Maybe some other time. Maybe later. maybe never.

Ron started Firecalling periodically. A two hour's conversation seemed most satisfactory after he drank half a whisky bottle, courtesy of Seamus. It wasn't much they were talking about these days. Ron told him about the shop and most of the times reiterated Hermione's stories from the Ministry. They avoided family talk like the plague.

On the rainiest of nights, piss drunk and desolate, Harry decided to apparate in front of the Manor. It was already February and his resolve was strengthened by the oppressing sentiment that he somehow killed Malfoy's wand because the poor thing stopped reacting in any way except for releasing black poofs of smoke instead of green Slytherin sparks. After spending Christmas and the New Year by paying a visit to the graveyard, he wasn't sure he could face the outside world in the same manner anyway.

It was what pushed him to take action, besides the numerous wand lore books he discovered in the Black family library. Somewhere, in a leather bound tome with musty pages, he noticed a footnote that said the following "There is no doubt about the compatibility of the Hawthorn with Holly. There are only two options for these two, they end up either as lifelong enemies or as lovers. There is no in-between."

Suddenly, it seemed like the answer to all of his questions. Perhaps not even Hermione read about wand lore as much as he did those past few months.

It proved to be a bad idea. While knocking on the massive door, he realised he had forgotten Malfoy's wand.

An ancient house-elf opened the door for him. "Wait here for my master, Harry Potter." It should have come as a surprise to hear his name from the house elf's mouth but then again, he learned to be surprised at least twice a day, when he wasn't lying shit-faced on the couch from booze. The Malfoy money still worked wonders when it came to securing privileges. They still had their monopolising wine business, seemed to hold even more influence in the Ministry and were still able to keep house-elves around, despite the Magical Creatures Decree issued not a year previous by the DMLE.

However, he couldn't help but gasp in shock when Draco Malfoy descended the stairs wearing a green robe, hair a mess, eyes red and puffy. It had been obvious he'd been crying his eyes out for a reason which eluded Harry completely. Even someone with the observation skills of a troll could have seen that. In a terrible display of self-control, Malfoy cleared his throat loudly and gave Harry a scathing look.

"Master..." croaked the old elf, his ears flopping downwards. "Harry Potter barged in unannounced, he really has the manners of an oaf."

It wounded Harry's feelings a little, but fortunately for him, it was the sort of welcome he expected.

"Potter," Malfoy managed to say, his usual vitriol surprisingly watered down. "What brings you to my doorstep?" 

Harry felt giddy, unexplainably so. A mad, uncontrollable laughter irrupted from his chest. Draco looked at him in confusion, grey eyes irritated by lack of sleep.

"Malfoy, I'm actually so happy to see you!"

Draco Malfoy just eyed him suspiciously. 

"Have you finally cracked, Potter? It's bloody three in the morning! Some people sleep at this hour!" He reached the hallway, shivering a bit. "You better have a good reason for this." Now Malfoy regained some of his usual gumption, regardless of the hour.

Nonetheless, Harry grinned and wobbled on his feet. For the first time, seeing Draco Malfoy, his childhood nemesis, filled him with unparalleled joy. He must be going mad.

The End

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. Feedback is appreciated!


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